Friday, 23 December 2016

"A state statute that goes into effect on Jan. 1 will no longer treat fights in schools or buses as a minor offense, regardless of a young person’s age or grade. Instead, School Resource Officers (SROs) and local law enforcement will now intervene by arresting and charging them with assault in the third degree — a Class E felony. That type of assault can result in four years of prison time, fines, or probation. Attempts or threats to cause harm will be treated as a Class A misdemeanor, which can lead to a year of prison time. If law enforcement or school officials consider the assaulted person a 'special victim,' a student can be charged with a Class D felony that comes with a maximum prison term of seven years."
— Carimah Townes, Think ProgressRead more...

"The white ringleader of a horrific sexual assault of a mentally disabled black teen will avoid jail time and escape classification as a sex offender after pleading guilty to a lesser charge, the Daily Kos reports.
John R.K. Howard plead guilty Friday to one felony count of injury to a child after leading two football teammates to help him carry out a a violent sexual attack on a black teammate with mental disabilities."
— Elizabeth Prezza, [Raw Story via] AlternetRead more...

Tuesday, 13 December 2016

This is the kind of fake news everyone should be aware of: Here's one I just concocted to show you how easy it is to be misled.

"In an exclusive interview, a source close the Transition Team of President-elect Donald Trump has revealed that the soon-to-be president and his advisors are in the early stages of a nation-wide “rebranding” program that will start with a makeover of the US flag.

Our anonymous source says that the new design is a reflection of President-elect Trump’s close ties to both the Russian Federation (The flag of Russia is a tri-color flag made up of three equal horizontal bars: white at the top, blue in the middle and red on the bottom.) and the White Supremacist movement. Mr. Trump sees himself not only as deal maker, but a unifier: “Who else could bring together ex-KGB guys like Putin and the people who run the KKK? We made a deal — all I had to do was say, 'Stop it,' and the Klan people said, 'Sure, we'll stop with the anti-communist stuff..." In return, Trump has assured them that all of his hotels and restaurants will never serve the vodka/coffee liqueur cocktail known as a “Black Russian” ever again."

Wednesday, 16 November 2016

“However well-intentioned, this talk assumes that [president-elect, Donald] Trump is prepared to find common ground with his many opponents, respect the institutions of government, and repudiate almost everything he has stood for during the campaign. In short, it is treating him as a 'normal' politician. There has until now been little evidence that he can be one.
More dangerously, Clinton’s and Obama’s very civil passages, which ended in applause lines, seemed to close off alternative responses to his minority victory. (It was hard not to be reminded of Neville Chamberlain’s statement, that 'We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will.') Both Clinton’s and Obama’s phrases about the peaceful transfer of power concealed the omission of a call to action. The protesters who took to the streets of New York, Los Angeles, and other American cities on Wednesday night did so not because of Clinton’s speech but in spite of it. One of the falsehoods in the Clinton speech was the implied equivalency between civil resistance and insurgency. This is an autocrat’s favorite con, the explanation for the violent suppression of peaceful protests the world over.”
— Masha Gessen, The New York Review of BooksRead more…